4 ms·

I don't understand why people dislike GNU Info doc. I often do not think about checking them, because `man` is so ingrained in my brain, but when I do I often f

I don't understand why people dislike GNU Info doc. I often do not think about checking them, because `man` is so ingrained in my brain, but when I do I often find them quite good. For example the info page for tar is much more complete than its man page.

guerrilla 4y ago
Probably a UI issue. 'info' is very weird unless your an emacs user. 'man' is just open and scroll up and down.
- hansel_der 4y ago
  second that man page or web search
- meribold 4y ago
  Does anyone know of alternative UIs for viewing info pages? Using less(1) would be nice, but is it straightforward to do so?
  - gradschool 4y ago
    https://github.com/baszoetekouw/pinfo https://github.com/baszoetekouw/pinfo mature project packaged for Debian and other distros, nice colorful curses-based UI, fast muscle-memory conducive keyboard control, you're welcome
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Sure, that's how I do it. $ info git | less
    - jwilk 4y ago
      Wait, does git actually have documentation in info format?
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        $ info git | head info: No menu item 'git' in node '(dir)Top' GIT(1) Git Manual GIT(1) NAME git - the stupid content tracker SYNOPSIS git [--version] [--help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>] [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path] [-p|--paginate|-P|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare] [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>]
        jwilk 4y ago
        That's just info(1) falling back to the man page.
        dotancohen 4y ago
        Thanks, I did not realize that it does that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  `man' is awful when there is more than a few "pages" to scroll through and you can't easily skip stuff because it is an all or nothing endless scroll of text. It is great for references, but not for reading in a non-linear way. They are called "manpages" after all, not "mantomes" :-P. Texinfo and similar are much better for this and the info format is fine as a text-based format (or with some minimal image use but not all viewers support those). The problem is that the default `info' viewer feels weird to most people, but there are alternatives like `pinfo' (which IIRC uses lynx-like keys) and `tkinfo' (a GUI-based viewer written in Tcl and Tk). IIRC KDE's help viewer can also view info documents. Texinfo and info is also nice with its index functionality and how it supports multiple indices. In a way info is kinda like CHM (but with optionally multiple indices) and Texinfo is the official way to make info documents.

guerrilla 4y ago

Probably a UI issue. 'info' is very weird unless your an emacs user. 'man' is just open and scroll up and down.

hansel_der 4y ago
second that man page or web search
meribold 4y ago
Does anyone know of alternative UIs for viewing info pages? Using less(1) would be nice, but is it straightforward to do so?
- gradschool 4y ago
  https://github.com/baszoetekouw/pinfo https://github.com/baszoetekouw/pinfo mature project packaged for Debian and other distros, nice colorful curses-based UI, fast muscle-memory conducive keyboard control, you're welcome
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Sure, that's how I do it. $ info git | less
  - jwilk 4y ago
    Wait, does git actually have documentation in info format?
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      $ info git | head info: No menu item 'git' in node '(dir)Top' GIT(1) Git Manual GIT(1) NAME git - the stupid content tracker SYNOPSIS git [--version] [--help] [-C <path>] [-c <name>=<value>] [--exec-path[=<path>]] [--html-path] [--man-path] [--info-path] [-p|--paginate|-P|--no-pager] [--no-replace-objects] [--bare] [--git-dir=<path>] [--work-tree=<path>] [--namespace=<name>]
      - jwilk 4y ago
        That's just info(1) falling back to the man page.
        dotancohen 4y ago
        Thanks, I did not realize that it does that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
badsectoracula 4y ago
`man' is awful when there is more than a few "pages" to scroll through and you can't easily skip stuff because it is an all or nothing endless scroll of text. It is great for references, but not for reading in a non-linear way. They are called "manpages" after all, not "mantomes" :-P. Texinfo and similar are much better for this and the info format is fine as a text-based format (or with some minimal image use but not all viewers support those). The problem is that the default `info' viewer feels weird to most people, but there are alternatives like `pinfo' (which IIRC uses lynx-like keys) and `tkinfo' (a GUI-based viewer written in Tcl and Tk). IIRC KDE's help viewer can also view info documents. Texinfo and info is also nice with its index functionality and how it supports multiple indices. In a way info is kinda like CHM (but with optionally multiple indices) and Texinfo is the official way to make info documents.